1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to techniques for nesting articles.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nesting devices have been used successfully to reduce the amount of manual labour required to fabricate a variety of articles. Channel members are especially labour intensive since one must be nested into another before they can be stacked efficiently. A common type of channel member is a wall stud which in recent years has seen widespread use in the walls of modern buildings. The wall stud fabricating industry is heavily labour intensive and the risk of repetitive strain injury claims is high, in part due to the need to invert, nest and stack the wall studs. There remains a need for an automatic nesting device that will reduce the labour required for handling channel members. An example of such nesting machines is U.S. Pat. No. 5,456,572 to OVERINGTON which is incorporated herein by reference. The device herein makes use of a pair of paddles to rotate each of a pair of channel members into a vertical position and at the same time cause them to be nested together. Though satisfactory for its intended purpose, this technique requires a relatively complicated structure and will not accommodate certain dimensional variations between channel members.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved technique for nesting articles.